Leafy Perception and Sorting out Detail

When I first started this blog, I alluded to, and then briefly wrote about my experience nearly losing my eyesight.

At the time, I was aswirl with fears and recalculations of life and trying to come to terms with it all.  As for many people, sight is my dominant sense.  I am a teacher, a reader, a writer; a filmmaker; and a musician whose greatest strength might be sight reading.

And I am a gardener.  Who studied it seriously enough to make it an avocation, and who chose not to make it a vocation, but relies upon it as a form of meditation.   So it was not the generic laments of "how will I read?" or "how can I create images on film?" or "will I be valuable, can I even function happily, as a musician who cannot read music?"  Each of those had their own levels of solvability.

It was when I looked across one of my garden beds out front, thinking I would scan for weeds, and realized I could not even differentiate the leaves of the wanted plants, that I was whalloped.

One of many amazing things about the human eye (and our brain) is how we can see this, this image as recorded by a camera, but then also instantly and seemingly simultaneously scan for up close detail.  Standing from this point, I can look into and across the top of the foliage and identify where errant grasses and weeds are.  Kind of hard here, even if you click on the picture and open it up bigger.

So I have to approximate what our eyes can do.  Kind of like I needed to that day I stood a few paces away from the bed out front, and had a rapid, blistering series of realizations.

Like our amazing eye/brain communication, I was simultaneously realizing "Hey, I can't see the weeds!"  and "Hey, I can't see...much of anything.  Green.  That's it."  All the while moving in closer and closer...

The killer was I got right in on top of the leaves.  Which, in that case, were siberian iris, ornamental grasses, and regular lawn grass grown tall enough to flower and go to seed.

Not that I'd know.

I was done for.

***

I take a lot of close up and macro images.  For all kinds of reasons:  they rarely fail to interest me, it's a shortcut to helping make a picture "work," it's the only way to be sure certain details my eye-brain is registering are being communicated to the viewer.

When I lost my eyesight--when it went fuzzy, when I watched it glaze over and out--I didn't just lose a type of input.  I lost an important physical metaphor for sorting and thinking.  Learning and practicing are complex things, and putting learned practiced knowledge and ability to work creating is yet another complex something.

When it comes to camera images, you can sort manually that which your brain does intuitively.  See that picture there, with the angelica and the purple iris in the foreground and the peach and purple iris in the left background?  Pull it up large.  Let your eye scan over it.  Decide what it in sharpest focus.  In photography parlance, you are identify just what plane in the depth of field was made to be the center of attention.

In overblown fiction parlance, a character hones their eagle eyed attention on the pointy sharp edges of a loosely fronded angelica stalk, and notes the sharp contrast between edge and the surrounding air.

Either way, you just sorted detail that was already sorted. Look again; that picture was not taken by having the camera a foot away from the angelica.  The camera is at a distance, and zoomed in on the angelica stalks.  The fence in the far background is over 10 feet away from the angelica, and not a soft wash of grey, but series of sharp edged planks with clearly visible graining and splinters.  WHEN one's attention is upon it.  This angle/lens choice removes the option of paying attention to that.

So, you sorted a further level of detail from a collection of input that had already been pared.  That's a lot of thinking.  That's a lot of deciding where and when to pay attention.  

All of the levels are important.  When you stand back from the garden, there is a flow, a rhythm, both in the moment and over time.  There are colors to mix/complement/contrast, smells to consider, heights to account for both in terms of visual pleasure and plant survival.  Whose pleasure and whose survival, of course, being another set of variables.

***

So when I think about the ability to scan a planted area and pick out the wanted from the not wanted, feel the rhythm the planting establishes and determine if there are any breaks or hiccups, imagine what the textural and color palette will present in the future and if amendments should be made accordingly, I occasionally think of what I imagine a perfumer does.  How they select their elements to play together in the moment and over time, in what proportion...and how they must reach in to "pluck" that which does not belong, whether instinctively (thanks to long experience) or by careful process of elimination.  Or guesswork, which will lead to learning.  In my imagination, it is instinctive--but as a gardener I know that sometimes it is long experience which leads to the non-thinking but correct gesture.

On the other hand, as a musician, I know that the "right" gesture can be the result of training, or instinct, or a combination of both.

I also know that my ability to garden was ominously threatened by the prospect of losing my sight.  Which at the time reminded me of the dreams I would sometimes have in my youth about losing or seriously injuring a finger, as my instrument requires the use of all fingers on both hands.  

Perfumers must hate having colds, right?  Or the threat of brain trauma leading to anosmia?  Or even the temporary anosmia that can result from certain illnesses or conditions?

all photographs author's own

Storage, or, A Trip Down Memory Lane

Am scrapping other posts in the hopper, as I was visiting the Perfume Posse this morning, where March summarized her approach to storage.

The wise thing would have been for me to read and move on.  But, as often happens, I feel compelled to open my mouth.  And, as often happens, I attempted to find the balance between responding and oversharing.

Guess which direction I failed toward?

And guess what I am going to subject you to today?  Further meandering on the topic.  I'll start with my comment:

Erm…more than one storage system. Should I really tell?

Because…there’s the first “discovery sets” I picked up from Perfumed Court. Which I keep, still in their category grouping (“roses” “101″ etc) stuck into sea salt which is in odds and ends vintage stemware. Then there are the miniatures and precious morsels, a.k.a. put in the bottle by the maker items, which stay in the velvet lined drawer in my dresser. Then there are the Precious Decants and Smalls, Influenced by the Early Years which reside in a place of honor in my, erm, lingerie drawer. (LOL…lingerie in my mind conjures images of pegnoirs and camisoles and other dainties…suffice to say they are well cushioned, but not so much by silk and lace.) A few full bottles in the front of the other two drawers.

Decants in boxes, loosely grouped by house, unless they are workhorses grouped by season, in which case they are likely to be in a bigger bottle anyway. Back up bottles (yes, I have as many as five of those) with odd vintage things (Intoxication, Hay, etc) up on the high shelf in the clothes closet.

Sigh. I almost feel like this is a confessional. I can almost hear the perfume years zing past…I remember when I first fell, I had a bottle of Norell (picked up at an estate sale as a curiosity in memory of my grandmother), a few samples plus the discovery sets, and then a full bottle of Magie Noire, my first “real” perfume since I had KL in college and Carolina Herrera from my wedding day. (I didn’t wear perfume then, but felt like I should have something for a wedding.) Husband purchased that for me the summer I fell down the rabbit hole.

Smile. As long as I’m confessing…there’s one more box. Not full. But overflowing with memories. I keep the perfume I purchased in Paris in that one, along with a vintage bottle of Apres L’Ondee that I split with friends who came to me via perfume but have become very dear to me.

Which would probably summarize the storage system overall. There is logic and method to it, but all considerations are subject to and generally molded by sentiment and history.

I didn't even bother to mention the whimsy of how certain splits end up out and on display.  They are there to remind me to play with them.  Unless, of course, they are carefully packed away, a game of hide and seek I play with myself when I squirrel away treasures to be re-found at another time.  The display:

Antique lipstick holder, a recurring item.  

Broken pottery, repurposed. 

 One of the stemwares mentioned in my comment.

Vintage manufacturers samples, about to be gifted for the new year.  Samples somehow mixed with other ephemera in an eggcup.  Samples from long ago, still in the (intact) cup where I first put them.  Because when/how they came into my life is sometimes a better way to retrieve from storage than "A-Z" or "Manufacturer" or "author."

Mind you, I admire Bonkers' perfume refrigerator.

Hmm, this one must be a misfit.  

These photos are mostly pictures from a favorite spot to write. The perfumes are not those that I generally wear, or that are "in storage."  They are..."in process."  

Kind of like me, when I am here.

I tried to speak about storage before, in this post ("Door #1: Ways of Storing").  Go there for more pictures, if you like.  There will be madness.

What I did not try to address before is what I recognized in my comment to The Posse.  Which is...I treasure memories.  And this exploration into perfume is mapped by memories as much as it is by scent families or style or even type of bottle.  Memories of where I was in the journey, to a great extent.  Memories of how a certain perfume anchors outward, certainly -- usually broader questions like does it connect to a geography/vacation/season? does it remind me of a certain friend, because they introduced me to it/helped me learn to love that scent family? does it evoke a certain period in my life?  But sometimes simpler ones, like "did I panic houseclean when this one was out and it ended up in my son's closet?"

And, it turns out I not only treasure memories, I have allowed myself to allow them to trump any Dewey Decimal style of organization that I might try.  A fair number of what I have are entered onto a spreadsheet, separated into sections labelled "Sample" "Decant/Partial Bottle" and "Full Bottle."  But not all.  A number of my "regulars" are sorted into boxes by season (warm v cold, basically), but not all.  

A number of my treasures are cloistered in the dresser.  But not all.  

treasures, yes, but whimsically collected here, largely because size allows

It occurs to me that if I end up fully charting, with this combination of words and pictures, in serial post form, I might actually accumulate a functional mind map.  A portrait of How Things Work in there, as it were.

(That laughter you here might be yours, but it most certainly the author's own.)

Anyway, I offer you sincere happy wishes for warmth and good cheer as the holidays wind up and the year winds down.  I'd like to give you a hint of what else is coming this week.

But I know enough now to know that what I would offer is the muscle of plans hung upon the skeleton of intent.  All of which would be subject to that little box of whimsy.


all photos author's own

Context

When I first started falling down the rabbit hole of perfume, there were loud voices on the way down, insisting that if I was doing this right, my nose would respond to a given perfume like any other [trained] nose.

Even then, when the "lock and key" system of receiving smell was at the top of the theoretical heap (a few changes in the last two-three years, with more to come), I had some issues with that assertion.  So I continued falling, all the while grappling with on the one hand the notion that proper training would teach me how to "know" smells, and on the other hand, knowing full well that context affected my experience of smell.

This is a complicated ball of wax, with threads of language and meaning and cultural parsing and stubborn emotion and primacy effect and such coming in and out, along with the need to step beyond the science of the nose.  WHAT?!?  But, if I am being true and scientific and evaluative and objective, I will stay within the bounds of the observable.  My outcomes will be duplicated by other objective observers across the globe.  Right?

Hmmm.

EXHIBIT A:  Fun with staying with "the observable"

A while back, in the nascent era of filmmaking, an enterprising director by the name of Sergei Eisenstein decided to conduct an experiment.  If you are an actor, you don't like the theory this guy came up with.  You see, he said that...oh, wait a minute.  Let me lay one on you.

Here.  Here is a picture.  Of a person.  Discernible data, right?  What you see is what you get?  What do you see?

Here is a woman, trying to decide whether she should wake up her child from a peaceful nap, because a book she just read told her she should make the child stick to a particular schedule.

Here is a woman who has just learned that her beloved dog will be euthanized.

Here is a woman who has just slain her youthful lover because he told her he was going to leave her and move to another country with her niece.

Eisenstein's theory was that, depending on *what* information you were given about the situation, and *when* you received it, the viewer would form (potential very different) opinions of what the character portrayed was feeling.  And he demonstrated this in an experiment with film footage that used the same images, but cut in a different order.  Depending on which cut a viewer saw, they interpreted the "story" differently.  But the stories reported were consistent within the context/cut viewers saw.

Therefore, the image of the woman above, taken from David Bordwell's Website on Cinema, has a range of potential interpretations in terms of "what is she feeling/doing," depending on where it is placed in the action.  And the amount of empathy you feel for her will vary, too.  Imagine if I had told you that this was a portrait taken in a jailhouse interview, by a photographer doing a series on serial killers?

EXHIBIT B: Just the facts, ma'am

Detective Joe Friday, a character in the television series "Dragnet" (sorry, I figure I'd better explain), had a signature line in which he directed witnesses to stick with "just the facts."  Intrepid reporters, too, were trained to sieve and distill witness accounts and get to the "truth" of the story.  An editor once warned me that it was important to get three accounts of a situation, to gain balance and perspective...but that much more than that, and you'd end up with a Rashomon situation.  (Go ahead, Google away on Rashomon effect.)  Essentially, Rashomon was a film that explored the same event through different witnesses eyes, a device employed many, many times since then, and which has obviously leant its name to the idea that just because accounts of something are *different* doesn't mean they are *wrong.*

Facts are facts.  But they are assembled into meaning.  (For a recent article on witnessing events and how our brains make meaning/create narratives, see this article in the May issue of Smithsonian online.)

EXHIBIT C:  My Grandma's perfume!!

Not "granny perfume," in which historical context in the form of time/era association is the first reaction to a given perfume.  I mean a literal "this smells like Person X," and Person X is a real-life, tangible (at least at one time), meaningful person in the smeller's life.  A person who conjures up a stew of memories, of associated smells, of associated emotions (both caused by Person X and connected to the era in which Person X had a significant effect on the smeller's life).  In other words, olfactory emotion.

I once gave a Lily of the Valley hand creme to a friend a generation older than me, and she put it on her hands, and cried.  She immediately assured me I had done no wrong, but that she had not smelled LOTV in a long time, not like that, on her hands...that the last time she connected LOTV and her hands was in her childhood, when her father, now dead, had gently helped her with a task that had caused her some travail and was happily concluded with picking some lily of the valley flowers.

I don't care who's nose is going to whiff some LOTV this May Day, and how trained it is; they are NOT going to have that response.  And I am hard pressed to agree that this kind of response should be ignored as part of the scent reaction.

EXHIBIT D:  Lock and Key no more, a.k.a. Viiiiii-braayyyyy-shunnnnnnNNNNnnnnsssszzzzssss

Turns out that theory about molecular shape and similarly shaped receptors and the limited number of each was troubling Dr. Turin, and he's been working on a theory.  Good.  Because simple math made it pretty clear that even the bumbling schnozzes among us are capable of discerning more smells than the number of "shapes" identified in the receptor mechanism.  Dr. Turin explains to Nancy Sinatra in a recent interview in MIT's The Tech Online; also see a quick overview in Science Daily from December of 2006.

I *love* this theory, for all kinds of reasons.  At the top of the heap is a connection I see between this theory and the physics and physiology and psychology of music.  But I'll come back to that in another ramble.

So, what we...that is, I, presenting to you...have here is this:

Scent, and therefore perfume, is perceived through one sense.  Mostly.  (Do those sparklies in SJP Lovely make anybody else think it's going to feel greasy?  Or that a greenish scent is by nature going to land in a certain part of your nose?  Or how about that hissing sound that comes out of a vintage atomizer...anybody else think ruh-roh, here comes an alde-blast? or granny pants?)  Okay, I cheated.  Take out the sight and the sound.  Stick to your olfactory receptors, only.  But how discriminating can we be?  How "objective"?

If the only other time we've smelled cinnamon is in a baked good, will we perceive a perfume containing it as sweet?  If we've never smelled cinnamon before, will we isolate it as a note, or reinterpret it as something else?  If the our major association with cinnamon is a delicious cinnamon bun, will we be happy when we smell it (mmmm, those delicious rolls), or anxious (argh, those annoying rolls of fat)?

What about familiarity?  If a note is "exotic," will we recoil?  Approach cautiously?  Embrace something different?  If we smell that same note on two different people, one a stranger, the other an intimate friend, will the effect be the same?  Will any difference we perceive be due to skin chemistry, or psychology, or both?

Brother, I am rambling.

And I haven't even tried weather yet.

Here's what I know:  I didn't know from perfume when I started.  And while smell might be a sensory input that goes straight to my limbic system, it had been the least explored and/or "practiced" of my senses.  I've put my eyes to work interpreting graphemic communication systems, interpreting 2-D and 3-D input for pleasure and survival.  I've put my ears to work learning how to translate phonemes into language, translate tones and pitch into music, identify pleasure (waves lapping) and danger (engine revving).  My fingertips can tell me if a wood surface is fully sanded and ready for sealing, if my child has a fever, if there is a leak in my bicycle tire.  My tongue can tell me if there is enough cilantro in the salsa, if another dash of bitters would be good, if the bread might be starting to get moldy.

Up until perfume, my nose was basically used for "eew" things.  You know, "eww, that's dirty laundry, alright," or "eew, that needs to get out of the fridge."  Or maybe a "yow" like "yow! something's on fire!"  Okay, wait a minute...I did get pleasure, too...honey locust in the spring...fresh breeze through the pines over the lake...compost ready to be called "humus."

Mmmm, I think I'm getting into issues of framework and language, or the absence thereof.  That's next week.  Suffice to say for now, I've got language up the wazoo for visual input.  A fair amount for auditory.  A working lexicon for tactile data.  A smidge for taste.  But not much for olfactory.

Back to context.

How we understand things is affected by what structures we have to process and express input.  We can try to be objective about how we take in that data.  And in many cases should strive to do so to the best of our ability.

But the idea of one scent, one meaning?

Posh.

Door #1 : Ways of Storing

When someone comes to my house and says, "Okay, where is this perfume collection?," I'm in a bit of a quandry.  Because there is no "here" or "there" to point to.  No wine refrigerator dedicated to perfume.  No shrine of bottles on top of the dresser.  No drawer or chest of drawers, no special basket, no pie cupboard.  No linen closet with dedicated shelves.

Oh, no.  Not that.

Some of that (a drawer, a basket, a shelf).  And some other (old glasses, egg cups, boxes, candle holders).  And general drops here and there for good measure.

The "filing system" is the same way.  Some things are gathered by source, others by house, others by season.  It makes sense for me.  Hey, one must adapt the best of Melvil Dewey, Carl Linnaeus, color theory, vintage formulation changes, frequency of use, and general attractiveness of bottle, right?

Not to mention that when it comes to sourcing, I have places/people that I am confident I got what I asked for.  Then there are those forays into the unknown, with varying degrees of risk, but those procurements often go into quarantine until I determine with greater or lesser certainty whether or not the contents inside are a) what they are supposed to be, and b) even if they are, what shape they are in.

Right here, at this point, if you'd like to make a judgement about how much mind space and time I allow for this little interest of mine, feel free.  All I ask is that you consider:  A) my mind works this way anyway, so the time factor is minimal (sorting everything into One Grand System and cataloguing Every Last Vial would indeed be time consuming, and frankly, a little mind numbing).  B) If this blog were about something else, we could go through a similar investigation of the way books are "stored" in my house.

(Aw, what the heck; real quick--largely assembled by type (fiction, reference, cookbooks, gardening books, history + historical fiction, antiques, series, nostalgia, more than one pile of To Read, in process next to the bed, in process out and about, oversized books, books of interest that are in public places (coffee table type and other, try to rotate), vintage cookbooks (a subcategory of cookbooks, further sorted into "from the family" and "collected on my own"), professional reference and interest (further sorted into "film" and "education"....)

((Don't ask about the CDs and LPs.))

the minis have their own lounge; more precious ones tend to hang together

A lot a Fume Folk eventually get around to talking about their collection, where and how it is stored, etc.  I loved when Brian came clean on sheer volume; when Kevin calculated just how long the juice would last; and when FlitterSniffer fretted about defrosting.  As it turns out, just today Nathan reveals he has been taking pictures of Abigail's collection.

I've been wondering how to publicly address this myself.  And when I threatened offered to show what was behind Door #1 in this week's "Let's Make a Deal," I pretty much planned to start the reveal.  I figured I'd spread it out over a few entries, letting each entry be a "portal" into the collection, with the mega confession Big Reveal at the end.

I think that, instead, I am offering up a mind map first.  That's right, I'm using the term "mind map," not "brain {flatulent event}."




I'm not going to go inside each of my drawers.  The filing isn't perfect, it's always in process, and unmentionables by definition shouldn't be, even if only visually.

But, look-see here; there's a pull-out, which is a sort of drawer.  Which, for those keeping score at home, doesn't see the light of day unless the door is opened.  Where it was all going to be kept.  "It" being the perfume.  All of it.  Or so I thought when I started.  Said I to myself, if it doesn't fit on this shelf, well, then, I've a problem more than extravagance.  (Speaking of which, no, that Amarige isn't Extravagance; it's the regular variety, not a flanker.  And it was no lower case extravagance, either; dirt cheap at T.J. Maxx.  Just so you know.)

Hey, has anybody been playing the "I recognize that!" game?  No, not psychological disorders.  Bottles and what is inside.  I kind like doing that with other people's pictures.  I've gotten a lot better at it over time.  But I'm still a piker.  

Here's a basket that hides under a bunch of scarves.  Bottles too big for my boxes, and bottles I want relatively easy access to.  Also in there is One Big Lesson that I've talked about in the past.  (It has to do with reputable sellers...mmmm hmmm....)

Hang on--what was with the muffin tin of stuff?  That's samples I've recently gotten that await testing before being assigned to a more permanent location.  That high shelf in a closet?  Full size, non-regular rotation; vintage peculiarities; a couple of back ups for beloveds that are discontinued.  Note the Ivoire edt prominent in the front, ready for swappage.  Oh, and though that splash of red on the right is distractingly close to Malle's red, that is actually a box with a collection of miniatures inside.  (I *know* I've talked about how awesome those are, right?)  The last thingamajig is a lipstick holder, which it turns out is a great way to hold 5ml decants.  If you like to display them/have them easily accessed and don't mind a some light exposure.  (Not a bad option if you are screaming through a decant.)  Notice the lid open onto 1mls, held inside the powder compartment.

Okay, OKAY!!  Sometimes things get left in the light.  Just how much time and energy do you think I spend on this, anyway??? 

Hee.

Honestly, really, not as much as you might think.  I've been at this for a few years now.  I spend a lot more time writing or thinking about it than I do storing it.  And, to be honest, I kinda like thinking about it, in the ways that I do.  

Brian, it's almost been a year and a half since you threw out your invitation to share pictures.  Consider this my late reply.  The rest of you, I offer a hint of my Big Reveal.  I promise, temperature is stable and cool, and the most precious are not exposed to light.  But this is a living collection.  Sorted by my brain.  And asking to be visual in at least some respects.

 Thanks for coming by.  Have a great weekend.


All photos the author's own, which I hope is apparent.  Also apparent is that I have not yet quite "formalized" my ownership of this photos, so sure, if you're unscrupulous, you can grab them and share them without attribution.  I'm working on making it easy for one-click honesty; meanwhile, just include my name and a link to my blog/today's entry.  You know, if you are documenting personality disorders, or who you know with Nuit de Longchamp, or want to send an amusing note to An Official Nose saying "I know that people talk about powdery scents, but do you suppose this person knows that *powder itself* is not classified as perfume?"  Or something like that.